Economics

Archive for Economics

Murphy vs. Graeber on Money, Round 2

Some 5,000 years ago, anthropologist David Graeber and I battled over his scathing critique of the standard economist (and Mengerian) account of the origin of money. He insisted that I read his book before sputtering more nonsense, and so I got The American Conservative to get me a copy. My review is now online. The […]

Everyone On the Internet Thinks I’m Hilarious

Or at least, of the people who are my Facebook friends, that is the overwhelming consensus. In related news, here are “4 Politically Controversial Issues Where All Economists Agree” (actual title), which I got from an enthusiastic link from Daniel Kuehn. Here are the four issues, as the blogger (Adam Ozimek) titles the sections–and I’m […]

Landsburg v 2.0: This Time, It’s Personal

Steve Landsburg is putting out a revised edition of his classic, The Armchair Economist. Full details here. Although Murray Rothbard is the economist who most influenced me, Landsburg’s book might be the single most influential volume in terms of how I try to relay economics to the layperson. What may interest you is that I […]

Krugman Throws 99% Under the Bus on Inflation?

Uh oh, I know some of you don’t like it when I say this, but I think we have another Krugman Kontradiction on our hands… In his recent op ed calling for a moderate increase in inflation, Krugman writes: [W]ould a rise in inflation to 3 percent or even 4 percent be a terrible thing? […]

On the “Big Oil Tax Loopholes”

I have a commentary at the Institute for Energy Research (IER) on the Administration’s recent efforts to stick it to the big oil companies. An excerpt: The rhetoric concerning the domestic manufacturing deduction is particularly silly. Back in 2004 Congress changed the tax code to encourage companies to keep their production activities within the United […]

More Krugman Mayhem Regarding the Hoover Record

I tell you, Dr. Paul Krugman is an absolute master of writing things that are incredibly misleading, but are technically not lies. The following actually took my breath away: Just to be clear, you can, if you choose, make moral arguments to the effect that it’s wrong to seize the rightful earnings of the wealthy […]

Paul Ryan, Draconian Budget Slasher?

I just did a podcast with James Delingpole (yes, the climate change guy) and he had mentioned that we might discuss Paul Ryan’s budget. Turns out we didn’t talk about Ryan specifically, but here was the point I was going to make: Go to the actual budget proposal [.pdf] (so no fear that we’re relying […]

Paul Krugman Hits the Bar Before Answering Steve Keen

I am super busy with “day job” stuff so I can only do a hit-and-run: In the big blogosphere battle between Krugman and Steve Keen, the latter threw out some sweeping insults of New Keynesian economics. One of the things Keen said was: Firstly, there are similar underlying principles to the DSGE models that now […]